Three organizations are suing the Trump administration for not releasing visitor logs from the White House.
The Freedom of Information Act lawsuit names the Department of Homeland Security as the defendant, because the Secret Service is the agency that maintains those documents.
The groups — the National Security Archive, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government (CREW) and the Knight First Amendment Center — are seeking visitor logs for the White House, as well as the names of those meeting with President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and his Trump Tower offices in New York City.
Congressional Democrats this year introduced a bill that would require the publication of visitor logs at any other place President Trump might travel to, giving the bill the acronym the MAR-A-LAGO Act.
“We hoped that the Trump administration would follow the precedent of the Obama administration and continue to release visitor logs, but unfortunately they have not,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement.
CREW sued President Obama twice over the same situation in 2009, and not long after, the Obama administration periodically released partial visitor logs. Critics also claimed that the Obama administration shuffled meeting places to avoid having to publish the names of everyone that was visiting with members of the administration.
A ruling from the federal Circuit Court for the District of Columbia in 2013 said the White House was not obligated to publish the names of individuals who visit.
